Mental Health Musical "hallucinations"... am I alone? (thanks for reading)

[Jabberwocky]

For reference, I am a 31yr male.

I've always been "mentally sound" my entire life, other than copious amounts of anxiety and depression from a very early age, I never felt like my brain was broken.

Fast forward through a decade of being a junkie, a tweaker, a K/disso head, a psychonaut, a pothead, an alcoholic and every other twisted scheme of drugs you can imagine assaulting your brain with.

2 years ago I went through a particularly heavy 5 month "binge" on psychedelics. The first 2 months were mainly LSD and DMT - often in combination, among several other things including alcoholism, chronic sleep deprivation and kratom... etc. Months 3-4 were mostly insane amounts of mushrooms and again, DMT.

I remember something changing though, my mushroom trips started becoming more intense and required a significantly lower dosage to "trip balls"... I started to act a bit strange, including some very strange phone calls with my mother who I tried to, at the time, convince that I was autistic and that was the reason for all my life problems. Looking back, it's hard to distinguish if I was acting differently or if I was just really drunk and sleep deprived... and high as fuck... I'll really never know.

One night, after taking 2g of mushrooms or so, on top of the alcohol and no sleep....my brain just SNAPPED!

I blacked out for basically 3 days. I have no memories other than the fact that I went to work and functioned. I remember coming to on the 3rd day and repeatedly texting my sister "I broke my fucking brain.... I really did it this time sis, I broke my brain".

I was still high 3 days later, and never really came down for 4 months. I understand now that I had a bad case of HPPD.... basically I just felt like I was on mushrooms for 4 months straight. I cut all the drugs, other than alcohol(ism)... and eventually I started to come back to reality.

I went to a neurologist about 9 months into this, and was diagnosed with "drug induced schizophrenia"... he, claiming I was schizo, also prescribed me to 20mg adderall and 1mg klonopin even AFTER telling him about my drug use.... so I really can't take his diagnosis or him seriously...

However, during this whole episode I began experiencing "musical hallucinations" (from day one of losing it).

The most accurate way I can describe it with words is if you've ever had a song stuck in your head, that just keeps playing over and over. It's all internal, its not like I'm hearing voices or some shit, but a song over and over and over in my head. It starts IMMEDIATELY when I wake up, before I even open my eyes in the morning!

If I've been listening to music in the last few days, it's always one of those songs... 5-10 sec increments usually the chorus, over and over and over again.... ALL. FUCKING. DAY. LONG.
If there was a lack of music in previous said days it will always be some random ass song I heard ~15 years ago... or sometimes, even more strangely some fucked up shit like a childrens song they sing you in preschool (sometimes it's even my mother's voice singing it - thank god that is rare).
The music seems to be directly related to my MEMORY, whether it's a day or 20 years - it's always something from memory...

The only time it stops is if I'm say actively engaged in something mentally, like a conversation or a movie, or drowned out by some other music.

It altogether isn't that unpleasant by itself, because I love music and forever will, but it serves as a constant nagging reminder of the damage I did to my brain with drugs, and that I may, in fact.... be a little crazy for the rest of my life.

I've googled it, and seen it referred to as "Musical ear" and "Musical tinnitus"... even some famous classical composers that supposedly suffered from this... but shit man I really just want it to go away...

It's not fun.

and I may live like this forever...

anyways this is just a bit of a vent/rant and probing if there is anyone else out there in the freak kingdom that has experienced something like this

thanks for reading,
truly - snafu

 

[Shady's Fox]

This is called rumination, try and listen to it. Face it and see if something changes.

 

[Jabberwocky]

This is called rumination, try and listen to it. Face it and see if something changes.

Can you elaborate?

I do listen to it... I have no choice... this isn't really something I haven't tried embracing before and incorporating it into my new reality... it's ever present and never goes away and sticks out like a sore thumb.

again, I've been dealing with this every day for 2 years now

 

[Shady's Fox]

Can you elaborate?

I do listen to it... I have no choice... this isn't really something I haven't tried embracing before and incorporating it into my new reality... it's ever present and never goes away and sticks out like a sore thumb.

again, I've been dealing with this every day for 2 years now

That's crazy, I feel sorry for you man, hope we get you through this. I really don't know what else I should say other than stop thinkin about it or distract yourself, but please read this reddit thread

 

[Jabberwocky]

That's crazy, I feel sorry for you man, hope we get you through this. I really don't know what else I should say other than stop thinkin about it or distract yourself, but please read this reddit thread

Thanks for trying to help!

Over these 2 years I have slowly started to just accept it. It honestly doesn't bother me as much as it did a year ago, and I think it's just starting to become part of who I am now. My brain is adjusting I guess.... over time...

I relapsed pretty hard on everything from meth, heroin, K, LSD, MDMA... etc... in the last few months and never had another HPPD episode or anything close to it.

Foolish, I know... playing with fire... playing with my sanity...

but fuck man...

repeating music forever...

I think I just rewired my brain too significantly.

Hopefully I'm not some old man in the future repeating this shit forever

-snafu

 

[Jabberwocky]

I'm not sure rumination is quite what you're going through, what I've experienced in a controlled way and what I think you're describing is actually hearing music that doesn't exist without cessation, different than an earworm or having a song 'stuck in your head' in the normal sense. I think having lyrics or a melody stuck in your head counts as rumination but not sure an auditory hallucination quite qualifies... but I could be wrong. It's like the difference between 'thinking' of lyrics or a melody over and over and actually 'hearing' it due to an issue with the part of the brain that processes aural information. It definitely couldn't hurt to try some techniques to combat rumination and see what happens. Looking up musical ear there seems to be some overlap in behavioral treatment approaches.

Maybe try and find a different doc who knows what they're doing? It seems like working with a good doc through an antipsychotic regime makes a hell of a lot more sense than speed and benzos.

Thanks for your input, really I appreciate it! Makes me feel like I'm not alone in this weird music shit.

You mention weed, and I should say that after this mental "break" I had 2 years ago I have barely touched weed even though it was a daily habit for 15 years straight. Something about weed changed for me.... it became MUCH stronger!... to the point where I can handle 2 tabs of LSD easier than 2 hits of weed out of a pipe (and I'm not joking at all).

1 hit of weed almost makes me feel psychotic for 2-3 hours... seriously... it's fucking weird I know.... yet I still eat tabs of LSD, ketamine, mdma.... etc with no difference over the years (if anything I'm more comfortable with psychedelics now than ever after HPPD... maybe I'm sick lmao)

you try to differentiate between "hearing" the lyrics in your head and actually "HEARING" the lyrics in your head..... it's both man - I know it sounds weird. I guess it's like knowing a song so well and becoming obsessed with it to the point where lyrics just flow through your head and you can "hear" them.... but thats the thing I do actually hear them, and snippets of the same song completely (IN TUNE).... CONSTANTLY!

I do have a goal of revisiting another psychiatrist/neurologist (but it's so hard approaching them sometimes when you're honest about you're past drug use... you always need a "dual diagnosis" am I right? -_-)

I just need to save up some money.... currently paying bills day by day and barely have enough money to eat (I should probably stop spending $240/mo on booze....)


Oh and me and my doc tried antipsychotics... was on zyprexa and risperdal for 6+ months and they didn't help AT ALL. Was also tried on lamotrigine, lithium, some anti-convulsant I forgot the name of and a few anti depressants. Couldn't take any of them, the side effects were worse than the benefits.


But I truck on.... still here.

Thank you for even reading my plight

-snfu

 

[stu71]

Hey, this is actually a gift musicians would kill for

What you gota do is, get yourself a guitar and learn some chords, then the next song that plays in your head ya gota get all over it, and learn it inside out, play along, sing along, record yourself, play drums over your recording, , its a gift man, use it, all the infos online to learn to play, its not that hard to play along , good luck,

 

[Nopeadoodle]

So I was here looking for information that has zero to do with this but your post grabbed my attention because... funny enough... I have been experiencing something similar for over a decade now.

Anytime I've tried to explain it to somebody the best way I can think to do so is that when it's quiet I can almost hear a song playing like from a radio in a different room that is turned down really low. I can't hear the words, I can't really grab the melody, but it always feels familiar. For a long time it irritated me because I could never figure out where it was coming from. When it finally dawned on me that the music wasn't really there I made peace with it.

I have no mental health issues other than periodic (tho usually situational) depression and a little bit of OCD. I hear this music when I'm stone cold sober. I have done a lot of different drugs but I haven't used psychedelics in probably 19 years. (I'm getting closer to 40 than I'd like to be)

I only ever hear the music when it's quiet and like I said before it sounds just like a radio and another room turned down just low enough that you can't really make out what the song is. I hear it whether or not I'm preoccupied with something or just sitting around, but it never really bothers me and it's not disruptive, just kind of kooky. I've mentioned it to a therapist I was going to during my divorce and she kind of just brushed it away once I explain to her how it doesn't really get in the way of anything it's just a curious little quirk about me. I'm sure if I had said something like I know somebody's talking to me through the radio it most likely would not have been brushed away, same thing if I had told her it was keeping me from functioning during my day. It's more like an upgrade from the buzzing people describe heavy silence as "sounding" like.

Is the music you're hearing actually loud and clear or is it more like that soft radio in another room and you just think you know what song it is because it feels familiar?

 

[jhjhsdi]

After long MXE binges especially ones that included long blackouts and lots of mania I would hear classical music playing in my head (stuff I'd never heard before) for days.

Used to annoy the shit out of me, lol. Especially when I was trying to go to sleep.

Nothing I could do would make it stop, apart from playing other music out loud/in headphones. Which never helped when I was trying to sleep, because music I like energizes me, and music I don't like annoys me and I become restless. For the record I don't like classical music. :/

 

[hydroazuanacaine]

can you ignore it? i hear sounds and music that are not there all the time. drug use exacerbates it to the point of being problematic (e.g. little voices coming out of my phone that cause me distress). as long as i’m not using anything heavy it’s just like music playing from the sky and i cannot tell if it is coming from a bar in the distance or my head (if it’s the same song that doesn’t exist again and again i figure it’s my head). scanning this thread, seems like that’s pretty normal.

if you have trouble concentrating because of it, a therapist might be able to help you ignore it. by ignore it i don’t mean make it go away. i mean like working with headphones on and having no idea what song just played even if you were typing to the rhythm of it.

no way would i go to a neurologist for this issue. i’ve gone to them for other things and they just script one drug after another to see if anything works (first innocuous drugs, then off label anticonvulsants, then atypical antipsychs).

because other people are mentioning it, i’m diagnosed with ocd as well. my therapist understands there’s no outthinking or fighting certain “issues” with logic and is big on accepting, which i also see mentioned in this thread.